1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates generally to a distribution system of digital contents, i.e., digitally encoded published materials. More particularly, the invention relates to a method for on-line controlling and updating a dynamic menu sent from a virtual bookstore to an electronic book.
2. Description of Related Art
Advances in computer and communication technology have provided to the consumers a convenient and economical means to access information in a variety of media. One particular area of information access is the electronic books. An electronic book is a viewing device that receives printed materials in the form of digital data downloaded from an information network. A user of an electronic book can read downloaded contents of books and printed materials subscribed from a participating bookstore at his or her own convenience without the need to purchase the printed copies of the books.
The World Wide Web (WWW) has now become a popular means for publishing printed materials in the open network domain. The WWW refers to the abstract cyberspace of information which is transmitted over the physical networks, such as the Internet. The WWW publishing works under a client-server model. A Web server is a program running on a server to serve documents to other computers or devices that send requests for the documents. A Web client is a program that lets the user request documents from a server. To facilitate the downloading of printed materials, the contents of these documents are typically created in a form compatible with network transmission format. The documents sent by the server are in a hypertext language format. A popular hypertext language is the HyperText Markup Language (HTML) which is a fairly limited formatting language.
To better serve the user, the server may want to display a dynamic menu on the viewing device when the viewing device is on-line. It is desirable that the user of the viewing device be able to select an item from this dynamic menu and that such selection would activate a dynamic action.
Therefore, there is a need for a method to display and update a dynamic menu on the display screen of a viewing device when it is on-line with a server.